Month: May 2016

To the surprise of no one, finishing my dissertation took up absolutely all of my writing energy. So now that I’ve done with my Ph.D. (a day that seemed unreachable), I now can return to exploring this topic in a more accessible way.

For my research, the written sources I used were written for a public audience. Most of the articles and all of the cycling guides were didactic. That is, most writers were attempting to teach their readers about cycling, which frequently included advice on how to dress. Granted, I was looking for information on women, which may have biased my methods, but I found much more advice on how women should dress as compared to how men should dress. In the future, I would like to dig more deeply into men’s dress in order to have a more complete understanding.

My project really wasn’t focused on what the average woman wore or how she might have experienced dressing for cycling. It’s true that I could have analyzed articles for this information, but given the performative aspect of writing for the public (and late 19th century mores), I wasn’t comfortable reading that much into their personal experiences. Franky, just writing about what styles were recommended was a huge undertaking and certainly enough for one dissertation. As interesting as it might be to get at the identity of these women, that’s another project entirely. I’d love to look at diaries and letters, but I have no idea what I’d find.

I am, however, planning to talk to cyclists living in the Twin Cities to learn about how cycling impacts/ relates to their personal style. The styles of dress have obviously changed greatly since the 19th century, but it will be interesting to learn how much the conversation has changed. Up next will be a description of an exemplary 1890s cycling costume.